


dial the numbers

by sapphicish



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: F/F, Post s06e12, Unresolved Romantic Tension, anyway tegan is head over heels, i know my answer!, is this unrequited or are they both just unwilling to make the first move
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23755771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: Tegan calls Annalise after the hearing. They talk. Tegan yearns. The usual.
Relationships: Annalise Keating/Tegan Price
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69





	dial the numbers

**Author's Note:**

> i do not watch htgawm nearly religiously enough to write good htgawm fic or dialogue. i am not sure what the current plot points are or anything really. mostly i just watch tegalise scenes on repeat. however i do know that if they do not kiss by the finale i will actually spit acid. (also if it comes out that marcia gay harden's character was doing incest with her brother i will SPIT ACID.) thank you for reading

Tegan calls her later that night, after everything, playing with a loose thread on one of her pillows as she holds the phone to her ear. She feels a breath away from collapsing with exhaustion, but the thought of calling Annalise nags at her one hour after the other until finally she goes to bed and sits awake staring into the darkness up at the ceiling, and by the time the clock on her nightstand flashes 11:15, she's giving in to that great and really fucking annoying urge, tapping in the familiar number, holding her breath.

It makes her feel like a kid again. Stupid.

Annalise doesn't take long at all to answer, which makes a flash of warmth come to Tegan in the center of her chest or stomach somewhere, and it lingers just long enough for Tegan to remember that, yeah, she's really in fucking deep with this shit.

“Hey,” Annalise says, voice husky and tired on the other end.

“Hey. Did I wake you up?”

“No, I was—“ Annalise pauses. Tegan feels it there, a held breath full of unspoken words and explanations about something she doesn't understand yet but might in the future, and Tegan thinks, _god damn it, what now,_ but then it passes. “No, you're fine.”

“Good. You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You need anything? I haven't even gotten out of these clothes yet, I can bring over some food or something if you want.” Tegan looks around her bedroom in the silence that follows. God, is she being transparent or what? She's just opening her mouth to take it back, to try and salvage the rest of the conversation, when Annalise speaks.

“Honestly, all I wanna do is take a long hot shower and then sleep for ten hours.”

Tegan blinks against the image of Annalise taking a long hot shower. She very much does not think about it after that first flash. It's just that simple. She doesn't. “Okay. I'll see you in the morning, then.” She tries very hard not to make it sound like a hopeful question. Of course she's going to see Annalise in the morning. Bright and early, no doubt with lots of other people around and no space to talk about how she wants to kiss her. Never any space for that. Which is good, probably.

“Yeah, you will,” Annalise says anyway, like she's confirming Tegan's hopes, even though she probably doesn't even notice – anything. And Tegan's just imagining things. Jesus, that's sad. Not sad as in depressing, sad as in like _get a fucking life, Price._ “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Not over the phone?”

Annalise's breath catches in a rough laugh. “God. No, it's probably best to do it in person.”

“I guess it's stupid to hope it's not in any way related to all this shit that's been going down?”

“Sorry,” Annalise says wryly.

“No problem. What's a little more? You know I'll be there.”

“Thanks.” Annalise breathes it into the phone, all tired and soft-sounding, and Tegan suddenly, very desperately, wants to be there in person to hold her hand again, to be there to support her through whatever comes next.

She swallows down the urge to ask if Annalise wants her to come over again, and instead nods until she realizes Annalise can't see her.

 _Fucking idiot,_ she thinks. “Anytime,” she says.

They suspend themselves there in that silence over the phone for a while longer. It goes unsaid, somehow – neither of them hang up. Tegan breathes and Annalise does whatever Annalise is doing, which is mostly just more of the same except for when it sounds like she puts the phone down to do something that's always just a little too loud and crinkly, apparently thanks to the phone not being quite far away enough. Tegan imagines she's shoving her face full of chips or something, and the thought makes her grin.

“Hey,” she says after a while, because she has to, “Annalise? I'm falling asleep over here, so I should probably go, unless you wanna stay on the line and lull me to sleep.” She adds the last part as a joke—obviously, it's a joke.

Successful, too, because Annalise snorts. “I could,” she says blandly. “I've got nothing else to do, and I'm wide awake.”

That's a lie, and Tegan knows it, but she doesn't say anything about it. She's too distracted, anyway, Annalise's offer making something inside of her stutter. It's not her heartbeat, because she's not that gay. Who the fuck is _that_ gay?

It's just something.

(Yeah, it might be her heartbeat.)

Tegan yawns just in time to play it off as casual, though the yawn itself is very real. She rolls over, clutches the phone to her other ear and closes her eyes. “Do whatever you want,” she mumbles into it. “But yeah, that'd be nice. You're nice.”

She hears Annalise laugh from a distance. “Jesus, you really are tired, huh?”

“Exhausted,” Tegan sighs. “Now ASMR me to sleep with your chips or whatever.”

“I don't know what the hell that means,” Annalise says, “and they're carrots.”

Tegan swallows back another yawn. “Wow. Healthy. Boring.”

“I ate all the chips.”

“Too bad. I'll bring you some more...in the morning...”

“Great. I think I'm going through withdrawal.”

“Uhuh...”

“Tegan?”

“Mmh?”

“Goodnight.”

Tegan burrows her head deeper into a pillow, drifting— “Night, baby...”

Awake Tegan would be mortified by that, and rightfully so.

This Tegan, the one this close to a nice long ten-hour sleep herself, just hears the faint snort of laughter from Annalise on the other end and doesn't understand it until the morning when it all comes rushing back to her as soon as she opens her eyes.

She punches a pillow and chants _asshole_ under her breath.

Then she calls Annalise later when she's shopping for groceries and pretends none of it ever happened except the part where she'd promised to bring her chips and forgot to ask what kind.

It's the good thing to do, and Tegan can be good. Sometimes.

She can be good for Annalise.

**Author's Note:**

> "I would dial the numbers  
> Just to listen to your breath"  
> -Melissa Etheridge, Come To My Window


End file.
